


Miles to go before I sleep

by EWM



Series: Febuwhump (First one ever!!) [18]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016) Whump, Blindness, Caring Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016), FebuWhump2021, Gen, Hurt Angus Macgyver (Macgyver 2016), Hurt/Comfort, I can't see, Nightmares, Protective Jack Dalton (MacGyver 2016), Whump, being chained up, whump and torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29641329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EWM/pseuds/EWM
Summary: Jack muses on the events that led to MacGyver's captured, while Mac dreams...The prompt was "I can't see"Part of my Obeying Commands fic(Obeying Commands/The faces comes to visit/I have to keep going/ A purple ankle and a floating brain/ A wet towel and chips)
Relationships: Jack Dalton & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Series: Febuwhump (First one ever!!) [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2150052
Comments: 8
Kudos: 17
Collections: febuwhump 2021





	Miles to go before I sleep

Jack’s calm worked on MacGyver (that and crippling exhaustion). Mac found himself falling asleep wrapped in a blanket. Although his head still ached and his whole body was a mess, he felt oddly peaceful. Dalton’s absolute certainty was a comfort to him, he’d been fed, he was clean, there’d been no pain (or nothing he didn’t deserve). The tiny crappy motel room was a safe universe away from all the confusion. He slept sitting up, but his head lolled to the side. Dalton smiled when he saw Mac’s hair fall over his face. He very quietly flicked it back and tucked by his ear. Jack couldn’t sleep despite how much he wanted too, he continued to stare at Mac as he had done for much of the day, had it really only been a day? It was only this morning that Mac had been screaming in the infirmary and now they were stuck in this strange nowhere space. All in, all it was a kind of improvement, the boy seemed a little bit less scared. Dalton knew he shouldn’t be so hopeful so quickly, recovery took time. But Mac had always been so resilient to everything, a tiny part of Jack him hoped that fighting spirit was still intact inside. His mind was clearly still there, although confused, Mac hadn’t lost any of his core. What worried Jack more was that the threat still remained. Lord had slipped away when they had originally rescued Mac and they were still no closer to getting him. The big question of why he had even gone after Mac was yet to be answered too. The foundation had searched for some connection between the two of them and come up with nothing.

Lord had not been distinctive as a bad guy. He was a monster sure; he was a trafficker who specialised in child soldiers, but they dealt with people like that before. The whole team had tracked him for three months before they found his hideout. But Riley had worked her magic and Bozer ever the master interrogator had managed to wangle some vital details out of their suspects. So they gone in with two tac teams backing them up. MacGyver had produced one his more brilliant homemade bombs and they had managed to rescue all the kids. The day should have been a triumph, but it would be burned into Jack’s memory of one of the worst in his long life. Dalton’s mind returned to when he had first found out Mac was missing, the building had been destroyed well mostly. There was debris everywhere and bodies (Lord used many of his men as shields). Jack called Mac’s name and when he hadn’t got an answer, he started running through the debris turning bodies over. Then the panic grew worse as Mac was still not to be found. It was one of the kids who had told them in the end about how the one with ‘the blue eyes’ had gone after to the bad man. Jack could still see the frightened child staring up at him as he had whispered it and that look. The look of waiting to be punished for saying the wrong thing; he’d seen in MacGyver’s own eyes in the last day.

The weeks of worry of that followed, of stress, working for hours with Riley and Bozer to try and find him all for it to come to nothing again and again. He remembered a particularly brutal screaming match with Riley where she was virtually on the verge of tears, Bozer pushed him out of the room and shut the door on him that point. Still they continued to hunt, Matty pulled them off everything else. Finding Mac was that absolute priority.

In one sense Mac saved himself, he’d managed to leave them a message, scratched into the wall. He’d left coordinates of where they would. The message was half covered by blood, but it had meant that they found him two weeks later. Jack had stormed the building, or the hideout guns ablaze. He shot every single guard, crony that he saw without hesitation. He found Mac chained to a wall in a pool of water and dirt, barely alive. He tried to tear away from Jack when they’d first arrived, convinced it wasn’t real. Dalton pleaded with him to make him understand, he’d hoped he’d gotten through, now Jack knew that when Mac had nodded at him, he’d only told Jack what he thought he wanted to hear. That had been what a week ago? Mac had slept and recovered when they came home, not really saying anything at all. No one pressed him, then of course today it had all come crumbling down. Lord meanwhile was nowhere to be found. In one way Lord wasn’t really the priority of course; Mac was of course first and foremost in his mind. And while Dalton was relieved that Mac was back home after so long, the guilt of his failings weighed heavily on him. If only he’d got there faster, if only he’d found a way, if only they’d kept any eye on him in the first place and so his thoughts went on. He hoped when Mac was more himself that he would be forgiven, but he didn’t count on it.

**

As Jack’s own mind span around analysing his guilt and his failings. Mac fell back into darkness, at first it was fine. Jack’s voice commanding him to sleep, that he was watching out for him meant he nodded off safe or at least secure. However, Lord returned, his tones murmuring in Mac’s mind. He woke up in the dark, he was back in the cold with a chain on his foot. He felt the metal of the chain carving itself into his skin. He struggled to stand; he heard the water as he tried to step forward and registered it covering his foot. He felt the pull backwards as that chain yanked him back towards the wall. He scraped his back against the rockface, he swore and stumbled. Mac started to scrabble around to find the chain and where it had been dug into the rockface. He was sure he could find a way to get it loose. Mac traced the links with his fingers and then found the hook, buried in what he realised was a crumbling rock. He started to dig, if he could bring even a tiny section down, he might be able to pull it out.

Then an unseen hand grabbed him from behind, unseen and unheard. He felt long fingers and nails digging into his scalp pulling him away. Mac cried out as the chain pulled on him and then somehow it was gone. But the hand was still holding the back of his head. He tried to fight, to grab hold of something, to wrench his head away, yet the hand kept an unnatural hold of him as he was pushed forward. He felt the trail of water continue, his could still hear, a strange plopping noise as he shuffled and tripped. Then the scene changed again; he was let go. After the initial silence, his ears were assaulted by a barrage of noise; voices, cars, people all around him. Yet his eyes remained dark, he moved again try to work out where he was. He found a wall that he tried to hunker down next too, but then the chains returned. This time they were on his wrists. Furious, he leapt up pulling against them blindly. He felt them getting tighter and tighter cutting off the blood circulation, but he didn’t stop. His legs gave out and he fell to his knees. The sound of a busy street or thoroughfare still surrounded him

“Somebody help me! “

A crowd surged towards him. The pull and push of bodies moving around him, limbs knocking into him, crushing him, he shuddered and pushed them away. There was too much sound, too much noise. Another set of hands taking him forward and yet they were recognisable, familiar. The long fingers and long nails

“Don’t worry Angus, I’ll help you.”

Lord’s voice once again so close to his ears, he could feel his breath on his skin. Mac tried to pull away, the sensation made his skin crawl. But those long fingers held him tight and he was still blind, he could feel the sun on his face, some part of his brain could even register the changes in light. But he couldn’t see anything, he was led away, and no one lifted a finger to help him, all the voices just continued. No one pulled him aside and protected him. He felt Lord’s arm around his shoulder, a cruel twisted version of Jack’s embrace. Every part of him felt sick with Lord so close to him, he was trapped with one of his own arms being crushed. The fingers got horribly close, they touched his skin, they went along each thin scar on his shoulders and his back, some were crooked, some oddly straight as if done by a scalp. Mac couldn’t stop it, he could only and stop himself from being sick from the touch of those fingers.

Once again, the scene moved, the noise was gone, and Mac was strapped to a chair. He was barefooted Lord’s voice came at him from all sides

“You’re going to need to learn to obey, you always make mistakes.”

“You’re trouble, more trouble than you’re worth. That’s why they haven’t found you, they left you. But I’m going to break you.”

“I’ll make you one of mine, I’ll break you in two.”

Mac swore and protested. He would never belong to Lord, he wasn’t one of his pets. He felt a gag in his mouth, so the angry rants became muffled nonsense. Then the cattle prod went into his stomach and he groaned. Then a knife went into his leg, the torments continued. He never knew exactly what was coming next, he could only hear it; the sheath of a blade, a buzz of electricity or the crack of a whip. He tore at his body trying to get away from it, his limbs felt like they were burst out of his sockets. At one point light appeared, whatever covered his eyes was gone, only now it was Lord’s face was there illuminated by a flame. He’d stopped talking, he smiled at Mac, he brought the light closer and closer to Mac’s face. The heat was overwhelming, it consumed his face, his skin. His eyes could see nothing but yellow, orange and then white.

**

Jack tried to wake Mac, he was screaming, tearing at the blanket. Then his hands went to his yes, trying claw at them. Dalton held him down, he bellowed at him at the top of his voice

“Mac, wake the fuck up!!!!”

The kid’s body arched upwards and twisted

“Open your eyes!! Open your eyes!!!”

Jack’s yelling broke through the nightmare and Mac’s eyes opened slowly. He blinked and stared at him

“Where did you go?” Jack asked

“I…I don’t know. It was black, but I could hear everything…everyone. Then he blinded me….he took everything from me.”

Jack let go of him, Mac pushed the blanket onto the floor and stared at himself. He pinched his skin to make sure this was really happening, that this wasn’t another cruel joke. Dalton put his hand onto Mac’s shoulder. There was no cruelty in that touch, no madness, there was a strange kind of stillness there

“Mac look at me, you are still here. Mac you’re still here. You’re right here with me. Whatever Lord did to you, you beat it because you’re still you.”

Jack’s heart sank even as he said this little speech, the dazed looked had returned to Mac’s eyes. He might not have been dreaming, but his head was still in that cold wet hole that he had found him.

“It was my fault…I shouldn’t have tried to sleep. Lord never let me sleep when I’d done something I shouldn’t have.”


End file.
